The Rev. Jason A. Barr Jr., who combined dynamic preaching, a powerful intellect and firm leadership to revive a dwindling Hill District congregation across a quarter-century of growth into one of Pittsburgh’s largest and most influential Protestant congregations, died Monday in his sleep.

Rev. Barr, who was 61, had struggled with the after-effects of an aneurysm in 2007.

“He was a man of such great vision,” said the Rev. Brian Edmonds, who was mentored by Rev. Barr and later succeeded him as pastor the pulpit of Macedonia Church. He was able to bring members of “the whole church community to places they could not see yet, but he could.”

Rev. Barr led the Baptist congregation on Bedford Avenue from 1988 to 2012 and continued as pastor emeritus afterward.

Beginning with a congregation with a traditional worship service and a few hundred, mostly older members, he left behind a congregation with more than 3,000 members and three Sunday services featuring high-energy praise music. He also led the development of the Macedonia Family and Community Enrichment Center (FACE), which organizes social-service programs ranging from truancy reduction to HIV/AIDS prevention and care to assistance for families in crisis.

“He brought a great mix of thorough analysis and sociology to his keen theological mind and visionary insights,” said the Rev. Ronald E. Peters, former director of the Metro Urban Institute at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where Rev. Barr was an adjunct professor. This “helped catapult Macedonia into one of the fastest-growing congregations in the city, redirecting a congregation from its staid, middle-class orientation toward a multi-service community-outreach congregation.”

A Post-Gazette profile in 2003 described him as a “sharp-dressing, barrel-chested, spirit-driven” preacher gaining a national reputation for modeling the revival of an urban congregation.

Rev. Barr “was a phenomenal preacher but primarily a teacher who really helped people to understand God’s word,” Rev. Edmonds said. “That was a huge draw. People had had a lot of experience with great preaching but not as much with powerful teaching. He also restructured the church to make sure it was mission-driven and not just program- or personality-driven.”

Rev. Barr didn’t hesitate to assert strong leadership. “If you are afraid to rock the boat, make people mad and then turn around and love them, you are not fit for spiritual leadership,” Rev. Barr later said in a 2009 sermon at Duke Divinity School, one of his alma maters.

“When somebody tells me, Reverend, you are ahead of the people, I say to myself, ‘Well, I’m the leader, I’m supposed to be ahead,’” he said.

Such leadership is essential, he told students. “If the church is to survive and be relevant, it must change,” he said. “If the church is to cease being a bourgeois club composed of the social, economic and spiritual elite, it must change.”

Rev. Barr and his energetic leadership suffered a serious setback in 2007 with his aneurysm, which took months of medical care to recuperate. Church members held round-the-clock prayer vigils.

Upon his return, he thanked both his medical caregivers and those prayer for him, calling himself a “living miracle.”

But the episode affected his mental and physical energy, said Rev. Edmonds. “Most people who saw him from a distance could not see what he had lost,” he said. “He was so brilliant prior to the aneurysm, his intelligence afterward seemed normal, even though it was below his standard.”

Rev. Barr was born on Jan. 30, 1955, in Jacksonville, Fla. He sensed an early call to ministry and was also influenced by the prophetic examples of African-American spiritual figures Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King. “There was something about empowering people that appealed to me,” he recalled to the Post-Gazette.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and a master’s of divinity from Duke Divinity School and pastored a small North Carolina church before coming to Pittsburgh.

He married Kimberly Barr who, with their son, Jason III, survives him. He is also survived by several siblings, nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his parents, Jason Sr. and Anne J. Barr, and a son, Joshua.

Visitation will be Monday from 4-8 p.m. at Macedonia Church, 2225 Bedford Ave., which will host the funeral service Tuesday at 11 a.m. Interment will be at New Zion Missionary Baptist Cemetery in Spindale, N.C.

Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.

First Published: August 11, 2016, 4:00 a.m.